Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
The post you linked for the beholder.
Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)
- Thread starter inverted_helix
- Start date
I said above it that isn't going to be calculated until I do the beholder part. Just wanted some input at present.
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Posting a bit I have done mostly so people know that no I haven't abandoned it yet again, it's just that writing out scenes like this takes me a lot of effort and thinking and still seems terrible. This is actually second draft of the section. I know translating things into dialogue makes things better, but I'm really bad at mimicking people speaking to each other, probably the hardest thing in writing because I'm not the sort that actually socializes much.
Also random thing that I thought of while doing this section is where Mami keeps her soul gem. Now canonically when she's transformed it's a hair pin on the right side of her head. But it occurs to me that as a fairly practical sort once she learned that her soul gem is her, she would move it to somewhere she could see it. I was tempted to put a section in the text about that but it wouldn't fit as something to think about.
Scouting the beholder for moments of weakness is mostly an exercise in frustration. Your clairvoyant teams are run ragged in cat and mouse games as it seems like every demon in Tokyo is far more energetic than they were in the past and entirely willing to spend that energy chasing after errant girls. Ultimately you end up with little info and basically just have to take your chances on attacking when you're ready.
Tracking where the beholder is at least is easy enough, though you end up moving in significant force even with the first strike team. The Kyoukos, Taya, yourself, Risa, a couple of barrier elites from Nagoya's contingent, and Nagoya's military leader Uno who pretty much insisted on coming along. She seems very much the sort of leader that leads from the front.
You form up some distance away in hopes of not giving yourselves away early and then approach under Kyouko's stealth field. The Beholder has been moving around quite a bit this month and so you try to set up in its path and let it come to you rather than trying to give chase, a stationary stealth field is easier to maintain then one on the run. As it approaches nerves are a bit tense throughout the group.
Kyouko has steeled herself for this mission, but you know she still questions if risking your lives for people you don't even know is really worth it. Selfless missions rarely turn out well for anyone involved in her experience.
Risa shows the cool confidence of an adult at ease with their situation, though you're not sure how much of that is just good acting. She has her hands on the teleportation interdictor, but her longbow and quiver are also ready for battle. You were surprised to find she carries as actual weapons rather than just summoning them. Though it was also pretty amusing that she was able to carry them around cities as far as you can tell with no magic to ward off people's attention on them, just the right attitude. She has a carved bit of wood packed with grief cubes ready to dispense them attached to her quiver.
The Nagoya girls carry something similar though metallic and plastic and more reminiscent of candy dispensers, if rather plain. They fidget a bit, checking their weapons again and again, and ensuring their soul gems are sparkling clear. This may be their job, but it's hardly easy when previous SOP was to run away from engaging this one.
Then the miasma washes over you. A clawing sensation starts crushing your heart. Fears and doubts grip you. They aren't yours though. Your soul gem starts softly glowing on your chest, and the feelings ease, held at bay, but you feel like they're still clawing around.
Taya collapses to one knee, and you rest a hand on her shoulder and try to encourage her telepathically. She's failed so much recently, and there's so many failures in her past for it to bring to mind as well. The lives that she cost, those that died on her conscience, because she was selfish. But she's here now, standing and fighting for the lives of others, and you make that clear to her. You also begin plying her gem with cubes from a fanny pack.
Kyouko is almost as troubled as Taya you can tell, but she faces her past every day. She lives with those feelings, and she's survived. She always survives, even when the cost should be too much to bear. She starts putting draining grief into cubes on her own. Her clone seemingly more buffered than her.
Ono and the pair of Nagoya barrier girls are fairly shaken as well, one of them visibly trembling. Ono begins leading them through war songs as they begin slowly feeding cubes to their gems, you aren't sure how much that helps with stealth, but given what you face sounds are probably not that big a deal anyway, hopefully. Risa's knuckles are white but she at least maintains composure.
You take a glance at the layers of magic around you. The two shields are still shimmering bubbles of hardened magic to at least fend off the first attacks. The stealth field projected by Kyouko and Kyoclone is harder for you to make out, particularly from this side and with two layers of magical shields inside it, but it seems to be holding up for now.
In the moments that you've been taking things in and trying to get your party steady the world has been changing around you. Beyond the layers of magic is a warping environment as buildings bend in towards each other like a wet painting on the side away from the demon, and on the side towards it you see only tunnels and darkness.
You advance into the darkness.
Tracking where the beholder is at least is easy enough, though you end up moving in significant force even with the first strike team. The Kyoukos, Taya, yourself, Risa, a couple of barrier elites from Nagoya's contingent, and Nagoya's military leader Uno who pretty much insisted on coming along. She seems very much the sort of leader that leads from the front.
You form up some distance away in hopes of not giving yourselves away early and then approach under Kyouko's stealth field. The Beholder has been moving around quite a bit this month and so you try to set up in its path and let it come to you rather than trying to give chase, a stationary stealth field is easier to maintain then one on the run. As it approaches nerves are a bit tense throughout the group.
Kyouko has steeled herself for this mission, but you know she still questions if risking your lives for people you don't even know is really worth it. Selfless missions rarely turn out well for anyone involved in her experience.
Risa shows the cool confidence of an adult at ease with their situation, though you're not sure how much of that is just good acting. She has her hands on the teleportation interdictor, but her longbow and quiver are also ready for battle. You were surprised to find she carries as actual weapons rather than just summoning them. Though it was also pretty amusing that she was able to carry them around cities as far as you can tell with no magic to ward off people's attention on them, just the right attitude. She has a carved bit of wood packed with grief cubes ready to dispense them attached to her quiver.
The Nagoya girls carry something similar though metallic and plastic and more reminiscent of candy dispensers, if rather plain. They fidget a bit, checking their weapons again and again, and ensuring their soul gems are sparkling clear. This may be their job, but it's hardly easy when previous SOP was to run away from engaging this one.
Then the miasma washes over you. A clawing sensation starts crushing your heart. Fears and doubts grip you. They aren't yours though. Your soul gem starts softly glowing on your chest, and the feelings ease, held at bay, but you feel like they're still clawing around.
Taya collapses to one knee, and you rest a hand on her shoulder and try to encourage her telepathically. She's failed so much recently, and there's so many failures in her past for it to bring to mind as well. The lives that she cost, those that died on her conscience, because she was selfish. But she's here now, standing and fighting for the lives of others, and you make that clear to her. You also begin plying her gem with cubes from a fanny pack.
Kyouko is almost as troubled as Taya you can tell, but she faces her past every day. She lives with those feelings, and she's survived. She always survives, even when the cost should be too much to bear. She starts putting draining grief into cubes on her own. Her clone seemingly more buffered than her.
Ono and the pair of Nagoya barrier girls are fairly shaken as well, one of them visibly trembling. Ono begins leading them through war songs as they begin slowly feeding cubes to their gems, you aren't sure how much that helps with stealth, but given what you face sounds are probably not that big a deal anyway, hopefully. Risa's knuckles are white but she at least maintains composure.
You take a glance at the layers of magic around you. The two shields are still shimmering bubbles of hardened magic to at least fend off the first attacks. The stealth field projected by Kyouko and Kyoclone is harder for you to make out, particularly from this side and with two layers of magical shields inside it, but it seems to be holding up for now.
In the moments that you've been taking things in and trying to get your party steady the world has been changing around you. Beyond the layers of magic is a warping environment as buildings bend in towards each other like a wet painting on the side away from the demon, and on the side towards it you see only tunnels and darkness.
You advance into the darkness.
Also random thing that I thought of while doing this section is where Mami keeps her soul gem. Now canonically when she's transformed it's a hair pin on the right side of her head. But it occurs to me that as a fairly practical sort once she learned that her soul gem is her, she would move it to somewhere she could see it. I was tempted to put a section in the text about that but it wouldn't fit as something to think about.
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Hm. Now that I think about it, the Lichbomb is likely part of the standard first-day orientation for all meguca who join the Serene; after all, it's not like the Incubators are going to put it in their recruitment speech, and Mami doesn't seem like the kind of person to keep it from everyone.
Hm, could be a good omake idea, for someone with the time to write.
The Battle For Tokyo (Part 1)
The Battle for Tokyo (Part 1)
Scouting the beholder for moments of weakness is mostly an exercise in frustration. While the sun makes its slow, stumbling way across the sky, your clairvoyant teams are run ragged in cat and mouse games. It's nerve-wracking. You nearly deployed twice to help, stopped only by Risa's sensible request to trust your people. You do. It's just... it seems like every demon in Tokyo is out for blood and entirely willing to risk themselves chasing after errant girls in ways they wouldn't have just two weeks ago. Ultimately you end the operation early with little to show for it and decide you have to take your chances on attacking when you're ready.
Tracking where the beholder is at least is easy enough, though you end up moving in significant force even with the first strike team. The Kyoukos, Taya, yourself, Risa, a couple of barrier elites from Nagoya's contingent, and Nagoya's military leader Uno who pretty much insisted on coming along. She seems very much the sort of leader that leads from the front.
You form up some distance away in hopes of not giving yourselves away early and then approach under Kyouko's stealth field. The Beholder has been moving around quite a bit this month and so you try to set up in its path and let it come to you rather than trying to give chase, a stationary stealth field is easier to maintain then one on the run. As it approaches nerves are a bit tense throughout the group.
Kyouko has steeled herself for this mission, but you know she still questions if risking your lives for people you don't even know is really worth it. Selfless missions rarely turn out well for anyone involved in her experience.
Risa shows the cool confidence of an adult at ease with their situation, though you're not sure how much of that is just good acting. She has her hands on the teleportation interdictor, but her longbow and quiver are also ready for battle. You were surprised to find she carries as actual weapons rather than just summoning them. Though it was also pretty amusing that she was able to carry them around cities as far as you can tell with no magic to ward off people's attention on them, just the right attitude. She has a carved bit of wood packed with grief cubes ready to dispense them attached to her quiver.
The Nagoya girls carry something similar though metallic and plastic and more reminiscent of candy dispensers, if rather plain. They fidget a bit, checking their weapons again and again, and ensuring their soul gems are sparkling clear. This may be their job, but it's hardly easy when previous SOP was to run away from engaging this one.
Then the miasma washes over you. A clawing sensation starts crushing your heart. The light of hope in your heart smothered. Fears and doubts grip you. They aren't yours though. Your soul gem starts softly glowing on your chest, and the feelings ease held at bay but you feel like they're still clawing around.
Taya collapses to one knee, and you rest a hand on her shoulder and try to encourage her telepathically. She's failed so much recently, and there's so many failures in her past for it to bring to mind as well. The lives that she cost, those that died on her conscience, because she was selfish. But she's here now, standing and fighting for the lives of others, and you make that clear to her. You also begin plying her gem with cubes from a fanny pack.
Kyouko is almost as troubled as Taya you can tell, but she faces her past every day. She lives with those feelings, and she's survived. She always survives, even when the cost should be too much to bear. She starts putting draining grief into cubes on her own. Her clone seemingly more buffered than her.
Ono and the pair of Nagoya barrier girls are fairly shaken as well, one of them visibly trembling. Ono begins leading them through war songs as they begin slowly feeding cubes to their gems, you aren't sure how much that helps with stealth, but given what you face sounds are probably not that big a deal anyway, hopefully. Risa's knuckles are white but she at least maintains composure.
You take a glance at the layers of magic around you. The two shields are still shimmering bubbles of hardened magic to at least fend off the first attacks. The stealth field projected by Kyouko and Kyoclone is harder for you to make out, particularly from this side and with two layers of magical shields inside it, but it seems to be holding up for now.
In the moments that you've been taking things in and trying to get your party steady the world has been changing around you. Beyond the layers of magic is a warping environment as buildings bend in towards each other like a wet painting on the side away from the demon, and on the side towards it you see only tunnels and darkness.
You advance into the darkness.
For all that you know that the exterior of the miasma is only a couple hundred meters, the interior hardly matches. Surely the Beholder has stopped moving or you'd have passed it by. Taya struggles to direct you through the maze of tunnels. Grief cubes from each of your party members' supplies trickling away as they maintain their spells and their sanity as you all advance at the walking pace dictated by your layers of spells.
The war hymns save your party from the utter silence of an environment removed from the world at large. No bugs, or birds, or car noise. None of the countless sounds of everyday life.
It occurs to you now that perhaps there isn't a route to the Beholder in its fully developed miasma. Should you try blasting through the walls in a straight line?
As you stride past stalagmites and stalactites you almost decide to voice your concern.
Then Taya finally speaks, "They're just around the next corner, the Beholder and six others."
The song stops and the stealth field dims the slightest bit at that announcement. Kyouko struggles for a moment to shore it up further.
"Seven on Eight isn't good odds for us." You're sure everyone thinks it, though you're not quite sure who said it.
You take a moment to lock eyes with Uno, Nagoya may have lent you its forces for this operation, but their commander being here was a clear sign that she still wanted to be able to make a call if it was too dangerous. Thoughts passed between your eyes without telepathy required. It was risky, but you had to take your shot.
"We only have to hold a few minutes at most, not win. We collapse the tunnel if we can, pop smoke, staggered retreat."
"We still have to keep it in range so it can't escape."
"With the odds as they are its fastest escape is to kill us all first."
That statement doesn't really seem wrong. Uno starts laying explosives.
Six companions was hardly a worst case scenario, but it was up there.
Worse still was you couldn't be sure of the arrival time of backup. They'd have to find their way through the maze first.
Still you inched around the corner and took a look for yourself. The Beholder floated in the middle of a grand chamber with the sort of vaulted roof that wouldn't look out of place in a cathedral if it weren't so irregular. The mantis seen before and five others you hadn't. A tentacle monster that gave you cultural shudders, a giant spider big enough it probably didn't need to predigest mere humans, a tree of some sort, a human looking one which only your magical senses defined as not being human at all, and a rather small dog that would look adorable if not for the rabid look in its eyes.
You took a breath. You hadn't really expected your stealth to hold so long against such a powerful clairvoyant. Maybe everything would go to plan. Uno is holding a lit match near a simple string fuse and dynamite.
"Go", a simple telepathic message, transmitted in the clear, both to Risa to start the interdiction, and to the girls that would be outside the miasma in stealth to listen for your signal.
The entire group of higher demons turns towards you. There's a moment of calm.
Against all expectation and reason, the Beholder then chooses to turn and float the opposite direction away. The rest of the demons stay facing you.
Someone curses, maybe everyone does.
Uno kicks the dynamite to one side of the chamber, but the fuse goes out almost immediately.
"After it!" You wouldn't give up now. The group advances instead of retreats. The two barrier girls throw bundles of smoke grenades to opposite sides. The smoke fizzles out of them far too slow.
You fire a battery of muskets directly at the Beholder in a pointless attempt to slow it down, they're caught by a barrier before the shots make it even halfway. Risa fires a series of arrows at the tunnel the Beholder is flying towards. A series of tiny detonations mark out above it, but fail to accomplish anything.
A screech fills the air, the outer barrier glows translucently, deflecting an attack you can't even see. Razor tipped limbs slide against the shell of the outer shield, and acid sizzles across it. Then the shields begin to shift and spin. The inner one interlocks and expands out as the outer one shifts inward, both spinning to deflect and knock off the demons trying to pry their way in.
The two Kyoukos are launching spears out through the shifting array of barriers, but the spinning is throwing off their aim as well. With the barriers darkening in various points in response to attacks that aren't even seen, not to mention the slight glow of deflecting an attack all around that hasn't stopped, melee just doesn't seem an option to anyone, hobbling most of your fighters.
In spite of that you manage to keep the Beholder in range, though the meaning of distance becomes increasingly distorted as the fight goes on. Uno is playing defense as well, and space is becoming more pretzel like by the second as she tries to generate more distance between the Class 3s and your group.
Cyclonic Shield Strength = 700/800 (Ironically this round number is brought to you courtesy of 10 dice rolls, not flat numbers, that magically ended up being perfectly round anyway.
)Of course then the Beholder, with eyes literally behind its head decides that running away isn't working. Beams blue, green, and black lance from it to your bunker shield. The first couple deflect and scatter across the outer shield, before finally shattering the barrier. Unlike your girls when a barrier shatters, Shizu is immediately burning cubes and summoning up a new barrier, but as it will take a lot longer to strengthen it again.
"Evasive, roll." The single shield remaining draws in from five meters diameter to three. Then whole group is dragged to one side as the barrier weaves left and you smash into the right side.
Your position changes in an instant, meters gone, as the remaining barrier is used to physically weave the entire group about as one through warps in space. Desperately dodging blows.
A stalagmite explodes in to shrapnel, used for a single instant's cover.
The smoke they tossed at the start is starting to fill the chamber, combined with sliding each way around the shield that has now started rolling, you've no idea where the enemies are. Upside is all your allies are in the bubble with you so you don't need to worry about friendly fire.
You flail ribbons out through the barrier with all the strength you can muster trying to hit targets blind. You may land some hits, but it's hard to tell, and you're spending magic fast as the ribbons start corroding when they leave the barrier.
The girl (Uzuki you think?) projecting the pachinko ball is the only one that can keep her feet effortlessly as you careen around the chamber chaotically. You on the other hand tumble around hitting other girls. The shield keeps glowing a soft fuchsia but the number of bright spots of direct impacts drops.
As you slide along the top of the bubble for a moment you notice Risa has regained her feet, magic glowing about them, and is shooting again. Swords and Spears vanish into the glowing smoke around you as Taya and Kyouko fire off attacks as blind as you are.
271 shield strength
Your pinball keeps bouncing around unpredictably, even the beam attacks slacken with some missing entirely in spite of their speed. Your disorientation is only growing as you practically headbutt Kyouko as Uno slides past you with her hands still shaping magic anyway. You doubt your group has done any damage to any of the youma, but the direct impacts on the barrier have dropped off almost completely. The barrier is still being worn down faster than they can repair it though.
160 shield strength
You start hoping you can stall things out until help arrives, especially as hits slack off. The room spins around as you learn about the true cruelty that is life as a pachinko ball. But then a scythe arm cuts directly into the front edge of the shield and momentum almost cuts the shield apart. The shield immediately starts spinning the opposite way to try and pull away, but before it can a beam scores a direct hit and the shield begins to unravel, even as it begins spinning backwards away from the trap.
86 shield strength
Shizu and Uzuki do their best after that, but it's obvious they simply can't keep the barriers up much longer under this sort of onslaught. You can feel the electric sensation of Serena's aura now though, you've almost held long enough. Then a final beam hits the final shield, and it pops.
The low sounds you heard within the barrier are now jackhammer loud. The screeching itself is agony. At the speed of thought you all start half jumping, half stumbling in opposite directions. Magical girls don't normally get motion sickness, but it seems there are limits, and what a time to discover them.
Shields shattered
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So it's incomplete. It's taking me forever to stop procrastinating and write though. So I figured I'd post what I have as a proper threadmarked miniturn and to hell with it, I can farm likes. This is a smidge over double what the original teaser was. Honestly things so far are shaping up pretty inconclusively. Mostly because Nagoya sent a ridiculously powerful defensive trio that is in fact capable of surviving this utter nonsense (for a while, depending on grief cube supplies). Though they'd do a lot better running the opposite direction.
Honestly considered letting you vote to turn around and run away when you saw the number of opponents, given that it was a bit higher than your plan probably expected. Probably should have, but I wasn't sure what exactly that would have changed in your thinking.
Rolls were a little bizarre to be honest. You flubbed scouting roll so bad I burned an omake for him to not eat your scouts. Then succeeded a very difficult stealth check for Kyouko twins to beat out Beholder's primary Clairvoyance power. Then the Beholder rolled to run away instead of fight (which I had put as a 10% chance because odds were stacked in its favor to kill you first as better means of escaping). Then 10 dice calculating attacks and defenses ends up resulting in a perfectly round number for end of turn shield strength.
Honestly considered letting you vote to turn around and run away when you saw the number of opponents, given that it was a bit higher than your plan probably expected. Probably should have, but I wasn't sure what exactly that would have changed in your thinking.
Rolls were a little bizarre to be honest. You flubbed scouting roll so bad I burned an omake for him to not eat your scouts. Then succeeded a very difficult stealth check for Kyouko twins to beat out Beholder's primary Clairvoyance power. Then the Beholder rolled to run away instead of fight (which I had put as a 10% chance because odds were stacked in its favor to kill you first as better means of escaping). Then 10 dice calculating attacks and defenses ends up resulting in a perfectly round number for end of turn shield strength.
Oh and something I'd really like is in addition to comments on content of the writing, I'd like advice on the writing itself, ways I could improve the atmosphere, pace, dialogue. As I've said before writing this quest has made me realize my human emulation software is worse than most chatbots. So I'd like some advice on how to improve, specific examples of ways to improve it would be best. I know that such things can reduce immersion though, so I understand if people don't want to comment.
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Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Without that AN, I actually was considering the thought you may just be trolling us with the Beholder retreat. Either way, we're liable to drop half a dozen C3's at once. That's a coup victory, honestly, and every C3 that's already dead is a C3 it can't use in it's next posse.
Given the purely aberrant nature of it's retreat, it's also entirely likely the beholder won't even increase the size of it's next posse, too, or better, C3's may be less likely to suborn themselves to it quite so quickly if it just cuts them loose at first sight of danger.
Given the purely aberrant nature of it's retreat, it's also entirely likely the beholder won't even increase the size of it's next posse, too, or better, C3's may be less likely to suborn themselves to it quite so quickly if it just cuts them loose at first sight of danger.
Spoilers so people don't have to lose immersion when we get into writing critique. 
There's a very common phrase 'show, don't tell.' The advice is sound, if a bit too one-note for a lot of people, but in general what it means is this: if you tell the audience that a character was nervous, and the audience can't make the inference for themselves without you mentioning it, you're not doing enough showing.
One minor issue is that it takes a bit of a word count. Your writing tends to be on the dry side: things happen and continue to happen and there's no room to sit back and take stock, as it were. It lacks the details and the little pauses that'd help the setting breathe. That's a good thing, because adding details in is not as difficult as learning when it's necessary to shut up. I'll take the first paragraph as an example:
Here's how I'd fluff it up:
I did one major thing, and one small thing. First, the small thing: I added a small detail that would let your readers know that it's a sunny day. It might not seem like much, but put in enough little tid-bits like that and those details add up. Second, the major: I thought of how Mami would react and then phrased it as if she were thinking those thoughts. This is Mami. She's nervous. She's lost people. She'll think about them. She's probably on more of a hair-trigger to go rescue people than before and less willing to risk them. She wouldn't think of demons as anything other than threats so the way she'd describe them would be as threats.
You can do that with the other details. Think of it like this: anytime you make a declaration about a character or about a setting, you should provide one justifying detail. It can be a single word, it can be an entire sentence, it can be a paragraph, but it should be something. Often enough, you'll realize that the detail alone suffices: you no longer need to make the declaration itself.
Usual disclaimer: make sure to break any writing rule you come across rather than do anything, in George Orwell's words, 'outright barbarous.'
One minor issue is that it takes a bit of a word count. Your writing tends to be on the dry side: things happen and continue to happen and there's no room to sit back and take stock, as it were. It lacks the details and the little pauses that'd help the setting breathe. That's a good thing, because adding details in is not as difficult as learning when it's necessary to shut up. I'll take the first paragraph as an example:
Scouting the beholder for moments of weakness is mostly an exercise in frustration. Your clairvoyant teams are run ragged in cat and mouse games as it seems like every demon in Tokyo is far more energetic than they were in the past and entirely willing to spend that energy chasing after errant girls. Ultimately you end up with little info and basically just have to take your chances on attacking when you're ready.
Here's how I'd fluff it up:
Scouting the beholder for moments of weakness is mostly an exercise in frustration. While the sun makes its slow, stumbling way across the sky, your clairvoyant teams are run ragged in cat and mouse games. It's nerve-wracking. You nearly deployed twice to help, stopped only by Risa's sensible request to trust your people. You do. It's just... it seems like every demon in Tokyo is out for blood and entirely willing to risk themselves chasing after errant girls in ways they wouldn't have just two weeks ago. Ultimately you end the operation early with little to show for it and decide you have to take your chances on attacking when you're ready.
Scouting the beholder for moments of weakness is mostly an exercise in frustration. While the sun makes its slow, stumbling way across the sky, your clairvoyant teams are run ragged in cat and mouse games. It's nerve-wracking. You nearly deployed twice to help, stopped only by Risa's sensible request to trust your people. You do. It's just... it seems like every demon in Tokyo is out for blood and entirely willing to risk themselves chasing after errant girls in ways they wouldn't have just two weeks ago. Ultimately you end the operation early with little to show for it and decide you have to take your chances on attacking when you're ready.
I did one major thing, and one small thing. First, the small thing: I added a small detail that would let your readers know that it's a sunny day. It might not seem like much, but put in enough little tid-bits like that and those details add up. Second, the major: I thought of how Mami would react and then phrased it as if she were thinking those thoughts. This is Mami. She's nervous. She's lost people. She'll think about them. She's probably on more of a hair-trigger to go rescue people than before and less willing to risk them. She wouldn't think of demons as anything other than threats so the way she'd describe them would be as threats.
You can do that with the other details. Think of it like this: anytime you make a declaration about a character or about a setting, you should provide one justifying detail. It can be a single word, it can be an entire sentence, it can be a paragraph, but it should be something. Often enough, you'll realize that the detail alone suffices: you no longer need to make the declaration itself.
Usual disclaimer: make sure to break any writing rule you come across rather than do anything, in George Orwell's words, 'outright barbarous.'
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I have no major complaints about the writing. It's a bit heavy on the "a happened then b happened then..." But that's pretty much unavoidable since you're trying to convey exactly what happened for planning purposes. Very good for technical writing, but for a story you probably want a bit more emphasis on the internal thoughts/emotions of the characters or their outward reactions.
The technical writing style fit very well with the turn-by-turn results since it made them somewhat depersonalizing and easy to reference, but for these narrative-heavy battles, you probably want a bit more 'show' rather than 'tell'.
The technical writing style fit very well with the turn-by-turn results since it made them somewhat depersonalizing and easy to reference, but for these narrative-heavy battles, you probably want a bit more 'show' rather than 'tell'.
- Location
- Internet, The
I like your writing. There is nothing that really stands out to me as bad.
As for the fight: the beholder is in large part that dangerous because it is the leader of a group. Letting it run away and instead killing its minions seems like a perfectly solid strategy. I just didn't think that would work, but if the beholder wants to leave, let it!
As for the fight: the beholder is in large part that dangerous because it is the leader of a group. Letting it run away and instead killing its minions seems like a perfectly solid strategy. I just didn't think that would work, but if the beholder wants to leave, let it!
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
The Battle for Tokyo (Part 1)Scouting the beholder for moments of weakness is mostly an exercise in frustration. Your clairvoyant teams are run ragged in cat and mouse games as it seems like every demon in Tokyo is far more energetic than they were in the past and entirely willing to spend that energy chasing after errant girls. Ultimately you end up with little info and basically just have to take your chances on attacking when you're ready.
Tracking where the beholder is at least is easy enough, though you end up moving in significant force even with the first strike team. The Kyoukos, Taya, yourself, Risa, a couple of barrier elites from Nagoya's contingent, and Nagoya's military leader Uno who pretty much insisted on coming along. She seems very much the sort of leader that leads from the front.
You form up some distance away in hopes of not giving yourselves away early and then approach under Kyouko's stealth field. The Beholder has been moving around quite a bit this month and so you try to set up in its path and let it come to you rather than trying to give chase, a stationary stealth field is easier to maintain then one on the run. As it approaches nerves are a bit tense throughout the group.
Kyouko has steeled herself for this mission, but you know she still questions if risking your lives for people you don't even know is really worth it. Selfless missions rarely turn out well for anyone involved in her experience.
Risa shows the cool confidence of an adult at ease with their situation, though you're not sure how much of that is just good acting. She has her hands on the teleportation interdictor, but her longbow and quiver are also ready for battle. You were surprised to find she carries as actual weapons rather than just summoning them. Though it was also pretty amusing that she was able to carry them around cities as far as you can tell with no magic to ward off people's attention on them, just the right attitude. She has a carved bit of wood packed with grief cubes ready to dispense them attached to her quiver.
The Nagoya girls carry something similar though metallic and plastic and more reminiscent of candy dispensers, if rather plain. They fidget a bit, checking their weapons again and again, and ensuring their soul gems are sparkling clear. This may be their job, but it's hardly easy when previous SOP was to run away from engaging this one.
Then the miasma washes over you. A clawing sensation starts crushing your heart. The light of hope in your heart smothered. Fears and doubts grip you. They aren't yours though. Your soul gem starts softly glowing on your chest, and the feelings ease held at bay but you feel like they're still clawing around.
Taya collapses to one knee, and you rest a hand on her shoulder and try to encourage her telepathically. She's failed so much recently, and there's so many failures in her past for it to bring to mind as well. The lives that she cost, those that died on her conscience, because she was selfish. But she's here now, standing and fighting for the lives of others, and you make that clear to her. You also begin plying her gem with cubes from a fanny pack.
Kyouko is almost as troubled as Taya you can tell, but she faces her past every day. She lives with those feelings, and she's survived. She always survives, even when the cost should be too much to bear. She starts putting draining grief into cubes on her own. Her clone seemingly more buffered than her.
Ono and the pair of Nagoya barrier girls are fairly shaken as well, one of them visibly trembling. Ono begins leading them through war songs as they begin slowly feeding cubes to their gems, you aren't sure how much that helps with stealth, but given what you face sounds are probably not that big a deal anyway, hopefully. Risa's knuckles are white but she at least maintains composure.
You take a glance at the layers of magic around you. The two shields are still shimmering bubbles of hardened magic to at least fend off the first attacks. The stealth field projected by Kyouko and Kyoclone is harder for you to make out, particularly from this side and with two layers of magical shields inside it, but it seems to be holding up for now.
In the moments that you've been taking things in and trying to get your party steady the world has been changing around you. Beyond the layers of magic is a warping environment as buildings bend in towards each other like a wet painting on the side away from the demon, and on the side towards it you see only tunnels and darkness.
You advance into the darkness.
For all that you know that the exterior of the miasma is only a couple hundred meters, the interior hardly matches. Surely the Beholder has stopped moving or you'd have passed it by. Taya struggles to direct you through the maze of tunnels. Grief cubes from each of your party members' supplies trickling away as they maintain their spells and their sanity as you all advance at the walking pace dictated by your layers of spells.
The war hymns save your party from the utter silence of an environment removed from the world at large. No bugs, or birds, or car noise. None of the countless sounds of everyday life.
It occurs to you now that perhaps there isn't a route to the Beholder in its fully developed miasma. Should you try blasting through the walls in a straight line?
As you stride past stalagmites and stalactites you almost decide to voice your concern.
Then Taya finally speaks, "They're just around the next corner, the Beholder and six others."
The song stops and the stealth field dims the slightest bit at that announcement. Kyouko struggles for a moment to shore it up further.
"Seven on Eight isn't good odds for us." You're sure everyone thinks it, though you're not quite sure who said it.
You take a moment to lock eyes with Uno, Nagoya may have lent you its forces for this operation, but their commander being here was a clear sign that she still wanted to be able to make a call if it was too dangerous. Thoughts passed between your eyes without telepathy required. It was risky, but you had to take your shot.
"We only have to hold a few minutes at most, not win. We collapse the tunnel if we can, pop smoke, staggered retreat."
"We still have to keep it in range so it can't escape."
"With the odds as they are its fastest escape is to kill us all first."
That statement doesn't really seem wrong. Uno starts laying explosives.
Six companions was hardly a worst case scenario, but it was up there.
Worse still was you couldn't be sure of the arrival time of backup. They'd have to find their way through the maze first.
Still you inched around the corner and took a look for yourself. The Beholder floated in the middle of a grand chamber with the sort of vaulted roof that wouldn't look out of place in a cathedral if it weren't so irregular. The mantis seen before and five others you hadn't. A tentacle monster that gave you cultural shudders, a giant spider big enough it probably didn't need to predigest mere humans, a tree of some sort, a human looking one which only your magical senses defined as not being human at all, and a rather small dog that would look adorable if not for the rabid look in its eyes.
You took a breath. You hadn't really expected your stealth to hold so long against such a powerful clairvoyant. Maybe everything would go to plan. Uno is holding a lit match near a simple string fuse and dynamite.
"Go", a simple telepathic message, transmitted in the clear, both to Risa to start the interdiction, and to the girls that would be outside the miasma in stealth to listen for your signal.
The entire group of higher demons turns towards you. There's a moment of calm.
Against all expectation and reason, the Beholder then chooses to turn and float the opposite direction away. The rest of the demons stay facing you.
Someone curses, maybe everyone does.
Uno kicks the dynamite to one side of the chamber, but the fuse goes out almost immediately.
"After it!" You wouldn't give up now. The group advances instead of retreats. The two barrier girls throw bundles of smoke grenades to opposite sides. The smoke fizzles out of them far too slow.
You fire a battery of muskets directly at the Beholder in a pointless attempt to slow it down, they're caught by a barrier before the shots make it even halfway. Risa fires a series of arrows at the tunnel the Beholder is flying towards. A series of tiny detonations mark out above it, but fail to accomplish anything.
A screech fills the air, the outer barrier glows translucently, deflecting an attack you can't even see. Razor tipped limbs slide against the shell of the outer shield, and acid sizzles across it. Then the shields begin to shift and spin. The inner one interlocks and expands out as the outer one shifts inward, both spinning to deflect and knock off the demons trying to pry their way in.
The two Kyoukos are launching spears out through the shifting array of barriers, but the spinning is throwing off their aim as well. With the barriers darkening in various points in response to attacks that aren't even seen, not to mention the slight glow of deflecting an attack all around that hasn't stopped, melee just doesn't seem an option to anyone, hobbling most of your fighters.
In spite of that you manage to keep the Beholder in range, though the meaning of distance becomes increasingly distorted as the fight goes on. Uno is playing defense as well, and space is becoming more pretzel like by the second as she tries to generate more distance between the Class 3s and your group.
Cyclonic Shield Strength = 700/800 (Ironically this round number is brought to you courtesy of 10 dice rolls, not flat numbers, that magically ended up being perfectly round anyway.
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So it's incomplete. It's taking me forever to stop procrastinating and write though. So I figured I'd post what I have as a proper threadmarked miniturn and to hell with it, I can farm likes. This is a smidge over double what the original teaser was. Honestly things so far are shaping up pretty inconclusively. Mostly because Nagoya sent a ridiculously powerful defensive trio that is in fact capable of surviving this utter nonsense (for a while, depending on grief cube supplies). Though they'd do a lot better running the opposite direction.
Honestly considered letting you vote to turn around and run away when you saw the number of opponents, given that it was a bit higher than your plan probably expected. Probably should have, but I wasn't sure what exactly that would have changed in your thinking.
Rolls were a little bizarre to be honest. You flubbed scouting roll so bad I burned an omake for him to not eat your scouts. Then succeeded a very difficult stealth check for Kyouko twins to beat out Beholder's primary Clairvoyance power. Then the Beholder rolled to run away instead of fight (which I had put as a 10% chance because odds were stacked in its favor to kill you first as better means of escaping). Then 10 dice calculating attacks and defenses ends up resulting in a perfectly round number for end of turn shield strength.
Oh and something I'd really like is in addition to comments on content of the writing, I'd like advice on the writing itself, ways I could improve the atmosphere, pace, dialogue. As I've said before writing this quest has made me realize my human emulation software is worse than most chatbots. So I'd like some advice on how to improve, specific examples of ways to improve it would be best. I know that such things can reduce immersion though, so I understand if people don't want to comment.
While @FixerUpper's writing style is different from my own, the spirit of their advice on the matter is something I can get behind. Let us infer; don't spell out. Make us see what's happening. Often you can convey a lot of what a character is feeling by choosing to focus on a single, very descriptive detail, and paint a vivid scene by focusing on one small part of it. What's the most important thing to capture the spirit of the moment? I also advise brevity; it can hurt to cut out words, but when writing a narrative, a good thing to always consider is: "Do I really need that many words to convey this concept?" A carefully-chosen verb can do the work of several different adjectives. As a hypothetical: "She strode towards the other party," perhaps, in place of, "She walked swiftly towards the other party."
Well honestly that strikes me as contradictory. It seems to me like any attempt to go for Show rather than Tell drags things out into far more words. I mean I could have finished up whole battle scene in a paragraph summary if I wasn't trying for show.
The idea of a single detail to show a scene seems odd to me though. I mean how do people build a mental image that easily?
Tried to include a couple of details like that in the new bit.
The idea of a single detail to show a scene seems odd to me though. I mean how do people build a mental image that easily?
Tried to include a couple of details like that in the new bit.
So doing the rest of the section at a bit of a more abbreviated pace, was getting too long for how many rounds combat was going to be. I mean I'm rolling things out as combat rounds, but this is going to be a lot of rounds so describing each to that degree of detail (that was essentially one "round" of combat) was completely infeasible.
Also you may yet survive this. Uno and the two barrier girls she brought are literally the best defensive units in the NM. (The two barrier girls are equivalent to somewhere in the neighborhood of 12-15 vet barrier users. There are advantages to a dedicated elite squad focusing on raising their skills whenever they aren't needed in combat.) And their rolls have been hilariously spectacular. Turtling as you wait for reinforcements is almost working. (For a fairly accurate definition of turtling. Offense can go cry in the corner.)
Added about 600 words to the previous post.
I'm trying to set a goal for myself to work on this for maybe an hour a day each day. With my terrible writing speed even when I'm not hung on something that works out to around 600 words or so, and indeed on a block it might be about 12. But if I keep nibbling at it maybe I'll eventually get something done.
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Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Yay.
*reads*
Oh. Oh Shit. I hope Serena gets here soon.
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I mean, there's a reason I'm specifying that this is all narrative advice. "They encountered the Beholder with a bunch of other demons and started a fight, which proceeded to go poorly," is a valid summary, but it's not narrative. Narrative inherently involves more words; interesting stories don't happen just with description. The brevity I'm talking about is a strictly subjective type of brevity -- brevity as compared to narrative writing in general. Basically, the rule is, "use only what you need." And like any rule, it's meant to be broken. Sometimes a glut of words adds to things. But in general, it helps to be as brief as you can.
This actually relates to the "single detail" thing.
Building a scene is not really about painting a picture with words, the way you sometimes hear people talking about. You can do that. If you prefer longer writing, there are perfectly engaging writers who do the same. Honestly, though, you can never capture every detail. Setting a scene is already a study in implying details. Your job as a writer is to figure out what you need to have explicitly stated. What things do the audience need to have in their head for the scene? What sets the tone? What interacts with the characters, or is interacted with by them? Where is everybody? You need to establish tone and plot. A single detail can sometimes do that. It's not an always thing, though. You'll often need more; the single detail scenes are merely a demonstrative example. But regardless of that, once you've taken care of the necessary, it generally is best to let the readers handle the rest themselves. People will build a coherent scene by themselves once you give them the framework. They only need a few things before that. As with brevity, the rule is to use only that. And again, exceptions exist.
This actually relates to the "single detail" thing.
Building a scene is not really about painting a picture with words, the way you sometimes hear people talking about. You can do that. If you prefer longer writing, there are perfectly engaging writers who do the same. Honestly, though, you can never capture every detail. Setting a scene is already a study in implying details. Your job as a writer is to figure out what you need to have explicitly stated. What things do the audience need to have in their head for the scene? What sets the tone? What interacts with the characters, or is interacted with by them? Where is everybody? You need to establish tone and plot. A single detail can sometimes do that. It's not an always thing, though. You'll often need more; the single detail scenes are merely a demonstrative example. But regardless of that, once you've taken care of the necessary, it generally is best to let the readers handle the rest themselves. People will build a coherent scene by themselves once you give them the framework. They only need a few things before that. As with brevity, the rule is to use only that. And again, exceptions exist.
The Battle for Tokyo (Part 2 Complete)
The Battle for Tokyo (Part 2 Complete)
With no barrier to protect you everyone splits to better dodge rather than hanging together. The smoke is if anything thicker than before and you can hardly see two feet. Your ear drums rupture leaving you deaf as well as near blind. The sound is still vibrating your bones though.
You keep moving, seeking a wall at least to put to your back. You hear the others crying out telepathically, but have no way of knowing where they are. Fear begins to grip you, real this time rather than artificial. Far more difficult to ignore. You can't see or help anyone. You use some grief cubes on automatic, paying it no attention.
The haze glows in random beams and sparks. You summon another musket surround yourself with ribbons. But you can't attack when you might hit a friend. Your skin is beginning to bleed though you don't think you've been hit. Your ribbons take constant magic to keep repairing. Your eyes sting.
You change directions at random and set off a pair of charms tied to your waist, the barrier is a mere directional shield though and barely lasts a second anyway even without a visible enemy attack. The healing charm restores your hearing for a mere moment of pain before it goes out again. The bleeding stops for now, skin restored.
The floor is littered with discarded spears in various states of destruction.
You can't hear the battle that you hope continues.
Your gem darkens.
Then when you begin to think that you're wandering alone, the air all starts rushing to one side. The smoke rapidly clearing. Help has arrived.
Your eyes are stinging badly and your vision still a bit blurred even without the smoke. You turn towards the source of the wind and see a hole cut through the cavern wall, in fact a series of a holes. Girls pour through to reinforce your beleaguered force. The chamber wavers a bit, but mostly holds.
You activate another healing charm and look for the rest of your party. The first one you see by some chance is Risa standing on the ceiling. If not for her hair hanging downwards you might think she was on the ground as she knocks an arrow.
From a quick glance about the chamber you see that everyone you came with is still alive, though Taya is mangled even by the standards of what a magical girl can survive. Uno and her girls managed to regroup already. The real Kyouko is actually more injured than the bow wearing clone, though both are still fighting.
You move to relieve Kyouko in her battle against the Spider without thinking. Firing a barrage of musket fire as you close. Shields once again appear to block your fire, but you bounce off the ground and leave a trail of muskets firing behind you. Ribbons then slingshot you back down before the spikes the spider fires back at you can hit.
Kyouko is still engaged though even as you draw attention, spears flashing out to block invisible attacks as she loses steps from her steady bleeding. Her clone acting more in her defense.
You summon a wall of ribbons and sweep it around her in a flurry, catching something small for a moment before it tears its way through.
Too focused on Kyouko, the other class 3 doesn't approve. A spike the size of Kyouko's spear passes through your side. You seal the hole with ribbons and pull yourself abruptly to the side and into the defensive shield of one of your groups of vets.
Two veteran groups move to support you and Kyouko, and you all shelter under their shields for a moment. The healers they brought work to repair the damage you and Kyouko have taken, while the other vets work to hold off the class 3s. Kyouclone moves to engage the Beholder with the other elites.
Your hearing comes back and doesn't immediately pop out again. You think to look for Taya, she was more injured yet you'd moved to support Kyouko, stupid, selfish even.
Taya has been collected by one of the other groups of veterans, alive if barely as their healer works to put her together again.
The air is practically buzzing with telepathic communications so dense and wideband you can barely tell your own thoughts from the dozens of frantic, excited, and scared messages bouncing around without direction.
You wait until you're healed enough, then both you and Kyouko dart between shield spells, and get allowed into the one the NM elites are maintaining. Your hearing pops back in as the NM healer patches you immediately on reflex. The sound inside the bubble almost makes you laugh in spite of the situation. "No theatrics, stick to training, be cautious, be defensive, you aren't invincible." They have a record player playing their orders to keep them focused.
The battle is no quick thing, unlike other battles over in seconds as magical girls and demons exchanged blows that neither could survive. In this battle both sides are durable, each of the Youma capable of withstanding tremendous punishment, and your tandem barriers have substantial strength of their own. Especially when the suppressive fire of your girls prevents the youma from fully leveraging their strength.
Each of your fire teams of veterans work to pin the youma away from the main battle, to isolate them and hold their attention. It works for the most part. They stay in formation and keep in their shields, popping charms to shore them up when they can.
The centerpiece of the battle is the Beholder itself. Beams firing each direction as Serena's team pits their power against its own drawing much of its attention while a dozen elites harass its flanks whittling down it's incredible barrier strength.
You direct the 7th veteran squad to attack the sound emitting human-like youma that's hitting the entire battlefield at once.
As the seconds stretch out endlessly you blast away with ranged attacks as you gradually get a sense of the battlefield, picking out the important pieces of information. The Beholder's shield is gradually weakening, even as it adjusts it so that it takes damage to use its regeneration power at the same time. But the shields on your own side are also being worn down quickly.
Serena's presence lets them fight on through just about anything, they won't give up, and it gives them the power to last even this long, but their shields are slowly ground down.
The human type youma is being worn down as well with two squads dedicated to it, but the others seem to be regenerating any damage as fast as the veterans can inflict it. If they hit at all in the case of the stealth type ones.
The Beholder is the one that draws first blood, the armor like shields Rae maintained over each member of Serena's team were likely more draining than the bubble shields the other group maintained. Or perhaps it's simply the raw damage potential the Beholder puts out as it tanks the hits of over twenty elites. Whatever the reason their shields fail, ethereal armor flickering out of existence.
The rest of the group withdraws to shelter under Nagoya's shields in relatively good order, but Hatomi is cut down, slow to adapt in the frenzy of battle. Another death paid for your ideals.
You intensify your assault, the droning of the record player helping you keep your cool as well instead of rushing blindly. The Beholder itself isn't doing well either though as its shields are down more often than not and you begin wearing through its supernatural flesh, probing for weak points.
Nagoya's barriers take up the burden of fending off the Beholders beam attacks, holding for now. The multiple patterns of shields overlaying each other and switching positions as needed. Rae lends her own strength to the barrier work once she begins rebuilding her own, though they struggle more to integrate her in the weaving pattern.
One of the veteran groups loses their barrier in a pop. The spider they were fighting amongst them as they scatter for cover under another barrier. Two more die, the corrosive sound and eight legs finding marks.
You redirect the extra team to grab the spider demon's attention and try to hold it. But after that it's almost like a chain reaction as another squad's shields fail and another vet dies. The squads struggle to regroup, telepathic communication jammed with too many panicked voices and verbal completely impossible with the sonic attack resonating through the chamber.
The entire veteran group begins losing cohesion. Their morale might be unbreakable thanks to Serena, but organization has almost collapsed as members from squads try to join others but stick to original targets and the youma begin changing targets themselves.
The shields around the gathering of elites themselves are also weakening as beam attacks gouge into them.
But the Beholder is losing entire eyestalks now as it loses the strength to keep attacks away from its vulnerable points. Its dark flesh being flayed from its body and its own fire is weakening.
The layered shields around you begin to break down. Two more of the veteran barriers fail.
It's close.
Finally the beholder begins to turn to dust. The environment around you begins breaking down.
The Youma attacks reduce to a pittance of their previous intensity. And the gathered elites begin splitting up into teams to put them down.
Without the Beholder's own aura countering Serena's, and with over 20 elites gathered, the remaining enemies are dispatched without issue.
The price you've paid for the victory hits you hard though. Even if you knew on some level there would be losses, you hadn't wanted to think about it.
Five dead.
You doubled your losses from the previous 3 years in a matter of minutes.
The battlefield is strewn with tiny grief cubes, but the reward seems like ash. Even as you have the vets gather it up and the entire company of magical girls withdraws.
+120 GCU in drops, -20GCU in immediate magic and grief mitigation use.
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Over the course of writing this it got steadily less detailed, but the simple fact is that when it went from 8 magical girls and 7 demons to 70ish magical girls I just kind of had to give up on any major detail and instead write a sort of flow. I eventually decided I'd rather get something out, anything, rather than leave it festering.
Theoretically Taya has the same odds as (an individual) Kyouko, but historically speaking Taya has the worst rolls of any of your characters I think. Taya survived by the skin of her teeth. Risa was the only one rolling at a disadvantage because she had the artifact and thus was a priority target, but her rolls basically said "screw this peasant bullshit, I'm better than you guys".
I rolled dice for every combatant. I mean after reinforcements arrived was 7 full rounds of combat with around 95 rolls a round. What I have learned from that experience is that I need more abstraction to that so probably should have just rolled each squad instead of each girl. Or even just rolled a handful of abstract rolls.
And Serena is the only reason that a handful of vets could hold off a youma at all. Before anyone asks without her you could theoretically have won with the combatants you had arrayed, but basically all vets involved would have been dead and probably two thirds or so of the elites.
For the next turn unless there's a surprise appearance of the people that enjoyed the super complex plans, I will probably go with the abstracted "clan" (though I think that term severely inaccurate) based system with essentially 8 action slots with 4 most likely locked in on continuing projects.
I'm so glad this arc is pretty much over. I still need to finish up the last bits of the full turn. Just a few bits and bobs.
Theoretically Taya has the same odds as (an individual) Kyouko, but historically speaking Taya has the worst rolls of any of your characters I think. Taya survived by the skin of her teeth. Risa was the only one rolling at a disadvantage because she had the artifact and thus was a priority target, but her rolls basically said "screw this peasant bullshit, I'm better than you guys".
I rolled dice for every combatant. I mean after reinforcements arrived was 7 full rounds of combat with around 95 rolls a round. What I have learned from that experience is that I need more abstraction to that so probably should have just rolled each squad instead of each girl. Or even just rolled a handful of abstract rolls.
And Serena is the only reason that a handful of vets could hold off a youma at all. Before anyone asks without her you could theoretically have won with the combatants you had arrayed, but basically all vets involved would have been dead and probably two thirds or so of the elites.
For the next turn unless there's a surprise appearance of the people that enjoyed the super complex plans, I will probably go with the abstracted "clan" (though I think that term severely inaccurate) based system with essentially 8 action slots with 4 most likely locked in on continuing projects.
I'm so glad this arc is pretty much over. I still need to finish up the last bits of the full turn. Just a few bits and bobs.
For instance how are you going to split the winnings? If you split them at all.
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Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Huzzah!
We have done it! The Beholder is dead!
Of course we're going to split them. Not sure how at the moment, but Nagoya and Kyoto both deserve a cut for their contribution.
We have done it! The Beholder is dead!
Of course we're going to split them. Not sure how at the moment, but Nagoya and Kyoto both deserve a cut for their contribution.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
So I'm thinking that we set 20GCU aside to reimbursse the magic and grief mitigation for the fight proper. Then we split the winnings 30-30-40, with the Serenes getting the 40 since they provided the largest contribution.
Can I just say that it felt like your writing improved tremendously, @inverted_helix?
I mean goddamn, it might be that your style of writing lends itself particularly well to the chaos of the battlefield, but that was definitely one of the better action scenes I have read in a while.
I mean goddamn, it might be that your style of writing lends itself particularly well to the chaos of the battlefield, but that was definitely one of the better action scenes I have read in a while.
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- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Seconded on the writing praise. That was brilliant.
Against a Class 4 and its attendant Class 3s, that is very light casualty-wise imo.
- Location
- Head in the clouds
So, I hate to ask, but did we lose anyone we know?